In this workshop you get 3 days of training in your OS of choice (HP/UX, OpenVMS, Linux or Windows), plus an HP Integrity rx2620 server with the new dual core “Montecito” Itanium chip. It is an excellent deal, so make sure to check out the Workshop overview and the agenda (PDF link) and reserve a space today!

Today Microsoft released the final version of Virtual PC 2007. You can download it here. This version fully supports Vista, both as a Host and a Guest, supports AMD and Intel hardware virtualization, and also supports 64–bit Host operating systems.

Today I decided to test out the Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) support in Virtual Server 2005 R2. In theory, as I mentioned in an earlier post, with VSS, virtual server can create a consistent “snapshot” of a running virtual machine so other applications, such as backup clients, can use that snapshot without interrupting the virtual machine itself.

The only VSS-aware backup application I had installed was Windows’ very own NTBackup. So, I enabled VSS on the volumes, run NTBackup, and proceed to make a backup of my virtual machine. Everything started out OK, until NTBackup got stuck with the message “Waiting to retry shadow copy…”. Following my standard error-solving checklist, I checked the Event Viewer, and I found this message logged:

We use Acronis imaging solution for deploying our server, and it turns out that Acronis’ VSS Provider has an issue with Microsoft’s VSS provider. Apparently the issue is well-known, and is documented in twoforums posts. It is solved in the latest version of Acronis’ products, but I didn’t really had time to perform an upgrade (and Acronis’ products are notoriously stubborn when you try to uninstall them). So, I applied the solution suggested in one of the forum posts. I unregistered Acronis’ VSS provider using the command:

regsvr32 /u \windows\system32\snapapivss.dll

After that, the backup went without problems:

Opening up the log once the backup is complete shows you that all files from the virtual machine were backed up succesfully:

This was done without turning the virtual machine off, taking advantage of the VSS functionality in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta. I performed the same operation on a Windows XP box, disabling NTBackup’s VSS support, and the backup predictably failed.

All of you are probably aware that you can download MSDN Pre-Configured Virtual Machine Images and of configurations you can get with the VHD Test Drive. There is another option, though, if you want to evaluate a Windows 2003 R2 installation by itself on a virtual machine or as a host for Virtual Server 2005 R2. You can get a 180–day evaluation of Windows 2003 Server R2 at the trial software page over at Microsoft. This makes it easier to evaluate the performance of the server product, for virtualization, or for any other tasks that you may be considering it.

The first step is to download the actual VM Additions. You can read more about the Linux VM Additions here. To download the additions, you need to log into Microsoft Connect, and the look in the available programs for the Virtual Machine Additions for Linux. Once you download and install the file VMAdditionsForLinux32Bit.MSI, you will have an additional ISO file under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Virtual Machine Additions\, called VMAdditionsForLinux.iso. This ISO file will appear on the Known image files on the virtual machine’s CD/DVD Drive properties:

Once you mount the ISO, installing the additions is straightforward. You only need to change the directory to the CD-ROM drive from a terminal (in this case, /media/cdrom), and run the script vmadd-install.run. This script takes several parameters, depending on what part of the additions you wish to install. You can, for example, only install the SCSI driver, or the X11 driver, or any other component. I installed all of them using the command line ./vmadd-install.run all:

You can also install the additions using the RPM packages, if your distro supports it. Once the additions were installed, the VM worked like a charm. The mouse integration works perfectly, and the performance increase is noticeable.

First, running the converter is pretty straightforward. You just launch the utility, and it presents you with a simple UI, where you select the vmdk you want to convert, and the path to the destination VHD.

Once you select the vmdk and the vhd, press the convertbutton to start the conversion process:

The tool shows you a dialog box when it completes the conversion:

I created a new virtual machine in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 using this newly converted VHD, and, not knowing what to expect, I started it. The redhat OS started the boot up process normally:

After making some adjustments to the configuration, including the X Server configuration, I finally got the X Windows server to come up. I am currently playing with the OS, and will proceed to install the VM Additions … I will document the process in another post soon.

As you can see, the process for converting a VMWare virtual hard disk to a Virtual Server VHd is very straightforward. This will work, ideally, in a migration scenario, but this also enables a scenario to try out the large amount of Virtual Appliances that you can download from VMWare’s website.

This week I finally manage to sit down and start using the 1.0 release of PowerShell. So far I’m impressed with its capabilities and ease of use. Here are a couple of tips to get you started with PowerShell scripting:

Get-HelpThe commands in PowerShell follow the format verb-noun. It is very easy to “guess” a command once you’ve been using PS for a little while. To get the processes on the system, for example, you use the command get-process. To get the contents of a file you use get-contents -path . An so on.

So, guess what command is used to get help? Too easy, isn’t it? get-help is your greatest ally when working with PowerShell. If you are unsure of what a command does or how it works, you just need to invoke the get-help command, followed by the name of the command:

PS C:\> get-help get-process

NAME Get-Process

SYNOPSIS Gets the processes that are running on the local computer.…

Also, get-help supports wildcards, so you can use it to search for commands (in case you’re not 100% positive on the exact command name). So, for example, you can do a:

Over at IBM developerworks there is an overview of virtualization technologies, starting with the history of virtualization, virtualization methods, and some more information on the current status of virtualization in the IT industry. The article focuses on Linux Virtualization solutions, but the information it contains and the background it gives is worth a read.